Honestly, what's the point in PBE?

Slyness·1/11/2019, 3:28:38 PM·113 votes·29,664 views

so we're just going to toss a vayne buff that's clearly going to be almost game breaking. her win rate shot up to all the way up to 54% and meanwhile we have a champion that has the ability to steal ANY ult in the game. Not to mention almost all champions that are new almost always comes out broken or too underpowered. Seriously, you have a fucking beta client for a reason. 80% of PBE players probably only come to play test skin and the 20%'s opinion doesn't even matter. On top of all of this, we still have to deal with Conqueror and all sorts of things.

;tldr: why have a beta client when you're just pushing all of beta shit to live build?

Edit: To all of you who keep saying vayne isn't at 54% I said her WR went UP TO 54%.

121 Comments

RiotAD Yuumi1/12/2019, 12:43:47 AM78 votes

PBE is a terrible place for any sort of balance feedback. Population is too small. Games are too uneven. We typically completely ignore PBE winrate data as it almost never lines up with what things look like when they go live.

It's great for finding bugs, crashes, and performance issues. Also great for collecting feedback on things like visuals, sounds, and higher level gameplay concepts. I found a ton of use in the feedback gained from PBE when I was working on Rengar for example.

You could say that "everything that goes to Beta goes live" but if that were true there would be a lot more crashes and framerate issues after patch day.

Kairoptra1/11/2019, 3:46:03 PM20 votes

Honestly, what's the point in PBE?

Bug testing and marketing. Balance data from the PBE isn’t reliable because of the constrained player population, so they use their own judgement in deciding what looks good.

Daddy Ants1/11/2019, 5:28:06 PM15 votes

{quoted}

so we're just going to toss a vayne buff that's clearly going to be almost game breaking. her win rate shoots all the way up to 54% and meanwhile we have a champion that has the ability to steal ANY ult in the game. Not to mention almost all champions that are new almost always comes out broken or too underpowered. Seriously, you have a fucking beta client for a reason. 80% of PBE players probably only come to play test skin and the 20%'s opinion doesn't even matter. On top of all of this, we still have to deal with Conqueror and all sorts of things.

;tldr: why have a beta client when you're just pushing all of beta shit to live build?

her win rate is not 54%

A rioter came and said it's 51.1% in high mmr.

Jhins Girlfriend1/11/2019, 5:25:56 PM12 votes

They might as well call it the Skin Test Environment.

Yoinked Your Ult1/11/2019, 8:17:01 PM10 votes

"PBE is new skintester and new champion tester". You guys realize new champs and skins have bugs too right?

ModAcademy Kayn1/11/2019, 6:55:56 PM9 votes

As someone whose in Game Testing, it's there to make sure no serious game breaking bugs make it through to live. Smaller bugs are caught too, but you can't just report a bug and get it fixed instantly, the developers need to understand how to recreate the bug, and then shift through the code to find out what to fix. Sometimes that can't happen before the patch goes out.

PBE has never been used for balance, and if it has, it's more than likely it just appears to be because of PBE. Skarner and Darius are the two attempts we have of Riot using PBE as a balance zone, because the PBE community just isn't reliable. Plenty of folk are there just to try new skins, no one uses the Ranked Que seriously, and there's a laze faire atmosphere in Normals. It's just not a place you can get accurate data on balance options, if there are changes, it's usually internal.